NHS England guidance

Sands welcome the inclusion of the National Bereavement Care Pathway in NHS England’s Medium Term Planning Framework.  

This is a major success for Sands, our supporters and campaigners, and key partners – all striving to ensure that bereaved parents and families receive high-quality and personalised care following the loss of a baby.
It means that immediate actions are being taken by NHS England to improve care and ensure women and partners are listened to following a stillbirth or neonatal death.

By embedding bereavement care standards into routine practice, NHS services can significantly improve outcomes, reduce trauma, and build public trust in maternity and neonatal care. 

As a best practice resource for improving the quality of maternity services, the NBCP has been developed to ensure that all bereaved parents and families receive consistently high-quality, compassionate, and personalised care following the loss of a baby.  

Integrated Care Boards and providers are now expected to take immediate action and implement the principles and processes of the NBCP to transform bereavement care from a variable, reactive service into a consistent, compassionate, and preventative model of support that ensures parents are listened to following pregnancy loss or the death of a baby.

What difference will this make to parents and families?

Healthcare professionals will have practical guidance on things like bereavement rooms, memory-making opportunities, and timely emotional and psychological care to support them to provide improved bereavement care.

The NBCP includes a list of standards that address both the emotional needs of families and the professional requirements of staff, ensuring that care is not only personalised but also consistent across settings.

How will this help to improve care?

By combining practical guidance for professionals delivering bereavement care to parents and families with standards of care, culture and behaviour, the NBCP ensures that every family receives personalised, compassionate support, whether through access to bereavement rooms, memory-making opportunities, or referral to timely emotional and psychological care. 

“Having the bereavement care standards and the Stillbirth and Neonatal Death National Bereavement Care Pathways embedded in NHS England guidance is a major milestone in ensuring everyone touched by pregnancy or baby loss gets the high quality and accessible bereavement care they need.

This success is down to the fact that Sands and our NBCP partners have led the way in improving high-quality bereavement care across the UK.

Sands will continue to lead and drive improvements in bereavement care with the NHS and our partners to help embed the NBCP and make sure it is effective and makes a difference to all bereaved parents.”

– Sands’ Chief Executive Clea Harmer.